Blackberry Picking

It is a well-known fact that free food tastes the best. It is also a well-known fact that fruit tastes better when it has been hand-picked. Nothing tastes sweeter than those little berries that survive being picked and avoid being surreptitiously snaffled on the journey between bush and dish. That is why blackberry picking should be law. 

 

Berry picking isn't just for the summer months, Autumn gives us a pretty damned good opportunity too! Nothing whispers hints of the start of Autumn more than the arrival of blackberry bushes being laden with juicy blackberries. 

There are blackberry bushes everywhere and, unless they are on private non-local authority land, the blackberries are completely free to a good home. I’m starting to believe that I have an inbuilt compulsion to pick fruit. Anywhere I go where there is fruit growing waiting to be picked I can feel myself twitch. It is a habit that I picked up in childhood and it seems to have gotten worse! 

Goin' in for the kill.....

For as long as I can remember I have seen families traipsing across fields with empty ice cream tubs in hand going on a berry hunt, but this year I was disappointed. For the first time ever I haven’t had to feel guilty about stealing a small child’s berry. Suddenly it occurs to me how much the old things are being forgotten.  

Isn’t that just a horrible statement to have no conclusion? I’m sure that the same was said for every generation that has come before this one but I have to say, things do seem bleak. Never has the premise of Wall.E ever seemed so real. (The floating people that eat and play on tech all day….not the robots falling in love…….)

People just don't seem to stop and enjoy the natural surroundings around them any more. Mother Nature is a humbling beast and one that should not be forgotten....there is too much beauty in her to miss! 

On the plus side, it means I have a monopoly on the free berry market, and if no one else is going to enjoy then I’ll enjoy it for all of them!